You’ve built a fast and mobile-friendly website, and you’ve been posting valuable, SEO-optimized content. Now you might be wondering what else you can do to rank higher on the SERPs. Welcome to the world of off-page SEO and, more specifically, backlinking!
Backlinking is an incredible way to build your authority, but it takes time, effort, and a budget. With countless websites out there, how do you ensure you get the biggest return on your backlinking endeavors?
That’s where this guide on getting a good backlink profile comes in. We’ll give you everything you need to identify high-quality backlink sites to create a healthy backlink profile. Let’s dive in and find out how to spot good backlink sites!
What is a backlink profile and why are good backlinks important?
What is an SEO backlink profile of a website?
When Website A links to Website B, the latter gains a backlink. The bit of text that includes the link to Website B is known as anchor text. Backlinks are, in effect, votes of approval one website bestows on another, and Google takes these very seriously.
Google has consistently emphasized the importance of a good backlink profile in its ranking algorithm, so it’s essential to approach link-building for your website systematically and strategically. No matter the strategy, the focus remains on acquiring good backlinks.
What are the SEO consequences of not having a good backlink profile?
When you check the quality of backlinks, you should keep these three considerations in mind:
- The backlink should be relevant to the content on your website.
- Good backlinks come from websites that have high domain authority.
- One link from a high domain authority website can easily outperform hundreds of backlinks on low domain authority websites.
That last point is vital. While high-quality backlinks elevate your website, low-quality backlinks can absolutely bring it down.
What happens if you don’t have a strong backlink profile and have only managed to get links from low-quality backlinking websites? Have you heard the phrase, “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with?” Well, backlinks work something like that.
If Google associates you with these kinds of backlinks, it can seriously hurt your SEO and affect SERP rankings. Keeping a close eye on your backlinks is important.
How to check the quality of backlinks In Google Search Console
There are a couple of ways to check the quality of your backlinks.
The most immediate way to keep track of your backlinks is through the Google Search Console (GSC). You can easily check the quality of your backlinks by selecting your property in GSC, then selecting “Links” and choosing “External Links.”
While this method is free and easy, it will only show you the top 1,000 linking websites and nothing more. Further, there is no way to check for anchor text and no metric measuring your backlink strength or profile.
If you’re serious about link-building for your website, you need a link-prospecting tool.
What are some good backlink profile tools for prospecting?
Link building is such an integral part of any SEO strategy that a good technical SEO tool is bound to include link prospecting. The key is to have one tool for all your different SEO endeavors and campaigns to have coherence between all aspects of your strategy.
Investing in a great tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz Pro is essential if you’re serious about getting a good backlink profile.
How to get a great natural backlink profile: 5 things to look for
Website relevance
It’s critical to focus your efforts on backlinking sites that deal with subjects relevant to your website’s topics.
Google likes links placed naturally and frowns hard upon links deliberately placed for ranking. If your website is related to athletic shoes, a backlink from an apparel review site is more relevant than a website with recipes. Makes sense, right?
Here’s how to determine relevance (in decreasing order of importance):
- Similar domain keyword profiles: If a website ranks or at least targets similar keywords as your website, it’s relevant. These should be the priority.
- Similar page keyword profile: Sometimes, the domain may rank for different keywords. However, if the page linking to your website targets keywords similar to yours, then you’re golden.
- Context around the anchor text: Consider the context provided by the words around the anchor text. The context of the text is conveyed by the keywords found in the text. So, for a sports shoes website, a backlink embedded in a paragraph about running is OK.
- Anchor Text: Anchor text that spells out the topic (keyword) accurately or closely should be the priority. Using the same example as earlier, being linked to “breathable running shoes” is better than being linked to “click here.”
Diversity of backlink profile
Over the years, Google has brought about many updates to refine how it differentiates between strong backlink profiles and poor ones. Since backlinks are a ranking factor, this practice will likely continue. As backlinking takes time, effort, and resources, you want to create a backlink profile for your website that will stand the test of time.
This is why you should create a diverse backlink profile with backlinks from multiple sources. Apply the same principle when targeting websites for backlinks. Analyze the backlink profile of the website you’re targeting and check to see where it’s receiving its backlinks from.
A website with a diverse and natural SEO backlink profile will endure and grow, and so will your backlink. Suppose you come across two websites, with the first getting its backlinks from just one or two sources and the second with a more varied profile. Prioritize the second one.
Quality metrics and organic traffic
Link juice is a term that refers to the SEO value that is transferred from one website to another through the backlink. The more value a page or domain has in the eyes of Google, the more value can transfer to the websites it links to.
Because of this, you want to gain backlinks from websites that are performing well in search. While you can look at metrics like domain authority (DA), a simpler way is to look at your target website’s traffic, as targeting websites with a good deal of traffic maximizes the visibility of your backlink.
There are other considerations, too. You should check to see where most of the traffic comes from. Perhaps the website you’re targeting has great quality metrics, but its users come from an entirely different audience base than what you’re targeting.
The website also should ideally have organic traffic from Google instead of solely relying on paid methods like ads. Putting your backlinks on sites that depend heavily on paid advertising is like relying on someone else’s marketing budget for your website’s growth. This isn’t an ideal solution in the long term.
Growth rate of backlinks
A backlink is an investment, and you certainly don’t want to invest with dubious parties. One way to check the credibility of your target website is to see how their backlinks have grown over time.
Google likes organic backlinks, which grow naturally over time. This means that if you see a healthy backlink profile that is also growing steadily, the website has likely grown organically. This is ideally what you want.
However, every website undertakes backlinking campaigns to develop its backlink profiles deliberately. There’s nothing wrong with those that have grown quite recently, provided you carefully assess the growth rate of that website’s backlink profile.
If you’re seeing sudden spikes and unexplained dips in the backlink growth graph of a website, be very wary. This is an indication that black-hat SEO may be at play. While it might seem harmless now, this website will likely perform worse against the next Google update.
Link placement
After you’ve conducted the above checks and decided whether a particular website is worth it, you can consider link placement. Link placement simply means where your backlink is located on a page.
The value of a backlink changes according to where it’s placed on a page. A link in the body text is more valuable than a link in the sidebars. Further, a link sitting higher on a page is slightly more valuable than one deep into a blog post.
Link placement isn’t going to tell you whether you should target a particular website or not, but when all else is equal, it’ll help you prioritize your link-building efforts.
SEO got your head spinning? Have Ranq take care of it for you!
Here’s your checklist for spotting good backlinking sites and building a strong backlink profile:
- Relevance
- Diversity of the backlink profile
- Quality metrics and organic traffic
- Growth rate of backlinks
- Link placement
Even after you’ve spotted good target websites, be aware that you can’t increase Google backlinks overnight. It involves systematic and strategically aligning efforts to maximize ROIs. The most persistent sticking point for most businesses is that they start losing steam well before seeing results.
This is why it is best left to experts. At Ranq, we provide end-to-end SEO digital marketing solutions from strategy to execution. Contact us today to see what we can do for you!